


oxygen (but you're killing me)

by crookedqueen



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 20:38:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedqueen/pseuds/crookedqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>bellamy flinches when clarke raises her hand to gesture at something; she realizes the weight of what she’s done by sending him to mount weather</p>
            </blockquote>





	oxygen (but you're killing me)

**Author's Note:**

> (clarke never left after season two)

> _silent screams are hurting me_  
>  just ask for my help  
>  take a whole or a part of me  
>  and ask for my help

It’s one of those dreams that reintroduces Bellamy to gravity, pulls him down from the stars and into the earth, blood and dirt, Dante at the dawn of his lifelong death. He feels fingers around his throat and chains where his salvation should be. And the worst part is that he’s not sleeping fully, is still half-conscious, knows he’s dreaming but can’t escape it.

Grounders wear stark white radiation suits and syringes poke his bare feet, sprouting from the earth as he runs from the woods, from nowhere and to no destination. But every time he hits a mile, the shackles around his bruised ankles drag him back another two, a sky-born Sisyphus, doomed to push a boulder that will always fall.

“Stupid sky boy,” a voice grumbles, spits in his face. “You are not a fallen god.”

A hand comes down upon his throat.

Bellamy’s eyes snap open, readjust to the darkness of his tent. He gasps for breath, wheezes and swears he can still taste the dirt in his mouth. He realizes that there really is a hand where his neck curves into his shoulder, that he’s grasping onto it in a death grip.

When his eyes flit up, Clarke peers back at him, breathing just as hard as he is.

Bellamy instantly releases her, and she recoils, holds her aching wrist up against her chest.

“Clarke, I - “ he rasps, trying to gather his bearings. They stare at each other for a moment and finally he settles on a simple, “Sorry.”

“No, I am,” Clarke whispers. “You were asleep. I should go.”

He watches her turn to leave and realizes in a sudden fit of desperation that if she goes, the dream will drown him again and those shackles will come right back onto his feet.

Bellamy grasps the material of her tank top in one fist to stop her.

“Why’d you come here, Clarke?” he asks. When his voice breaks, he adds, “Can’t get enough of me when it’s daylight?”

“ _No_ ,” Clarke cuts him a look. “No, I...I thought maybe you’d want to take a walk with me, get out of camp.” She purses her lips. “I couldn’t sleep.” 

She wants to ask, _Can you hear them screaming, too?_

Bellamy nods, raises a brow. “Don’t want to be around someone you actually like?”

Clarke shakes her head. “I want to be around someone I actually do.”

-

A half-mile outside of camp, there’s an alcove that the Ark’s debris has dented into the dirt and trees. Underneath the twisted remnants runs a wayward river glowing pale blue in the night. A frog with purple veins, neon and croaking, hops by as Clarke kicks a puddle with her boot.

Bellamy exhales as he leans against the log beside her, brushes his elbow against hers.

“So, princess,” Bellamy gruffs. “Finally managed to get me alone again.” His laugh comes out pathetic, void of any mischief. “Do what you will.”

Clarke seems concerned. “What were you dreaming about, Bellamy?”

He clenches his jaw, stares up at the sky.

“You almost stopped breathing. You nearly broke my hand thinking I was somebody else,” Clarke says. When he doesn’t respond, she grabs his arm, narrows her eyes. “Look, Bellamy, I’m not trying to be your therapist. But out of everyone out there, I understand. I understand. I know that I’m not your best friend, but – “

“You are,” Bellamy murmurs suddenly. When Clarke parts her lips in shock, Bellamy swipes a hand over his face and whispers, “ _Fuck_.”

“Bellamy – “

“What are we going to do?”

Clarke frowns. “About what?”

“About Camp Jaha. About your mother,” Bellamy says. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re walking right back into ruins, princess.”

“I _know_ that, Bellamy.”

“We just survived a war – “

“I know that, too,” Clarke snaps. “I was _there_. I paid the price, right alongside you. _Together_.” Bellamy’s eyes open in recognition at the word. “I’ve thought about it everyday since we left Mount Weather, Bellamy. The smell of burning skin, watching a gunshot wound spread, knowing that with the council on earth, we might as well have been killed off by the radiation. You don’t think I spend time wondering if the Ark should’ve run out of oxygen when we left it? That we were better off without them? You don’t know the guilt I feel, I – “ Clarke explodes with emotion, dragging in one shaky breath after another. “All of this – “

In the heat of the moment, Clarke jerks a hand out to gesture at the forest around her, but she cuts off when Bellamy flinches and grimaces, recoils like he thinks she’s going to hit him.

She stares down at her own hand, then at him.

“Oh God, Bellamy,” she whispers. 

They stare at each other, and a tear rolls down Clarke’s cheek as she imagines the terrors that must’ve plagued him to get _Bellamy Blake_ to cry out in his sleep. In the moonlight, the trees cast shadows like monsters over the boy’s wide-eyed face, softening his jaw, revealing the faint purple bruises marring the skin of his neck like a chokehold, clenching around his wrists and ankles like tattooed cuffs. The glow makes him seem younger than he really is.

Bellamy clenches his jaw in warning. “Leave it, Clarke.”

Clarke says nothing, hand still lifted in the air, trembling.

“Clarke?”

Bellamy frowns and takes a step towards her. Still no response.

“Princess – “

“I’m sorry,” Clarke breathes, stumbling back into the dirt. “I’m sorry.” 

She says it again and again, hurried and under her breath, like she’s apologizing to him, to Maya, to her mother, to Finn, to the souls laid to rest in TonDC, to the children of the mountain who had no choice, miniature Icaruses who were forced upon the sun.

“Hey, no,” Bellamy says, reaching for her with one hand, covering his bruises with the other. “Clarke, please don’t – “

She crumples into him, digs her wet face against his chest, and Bellamy frowns against the top of her head. She’s breathing hard, and he stares up at the sky, begging for help as he traces nonsensical patterns up and down her back and into her hair, raking messily through the strands.

Shaken, Clarke pries away from him, but he holds her strongly at the elbows.

Bellamy’s still frowning. _Fuck_ , she looks beautiful with tears in her eyes.

So he kisses her. Because that’s what Bellamy does. Cocky as shit with horrible timing and an awkward heart. And look, maybe he’s read her wrong. Maybe that look that’s always in her eyes, serious and honest and so in sync with his, has just been a fateful trick of the light.

Maybe that’s all they are.

_A trick of the light_.

They exhale, mouths pressed so tightly together that it hurts, stinging in their teeth, tasting bitterness on their tongues, and this kiss does not belong to romance but battle. It’s ugly and angry, and Clarke breaks away too quickly.

“I’m sorry, Bellamy,” Clarke murmurs against his chin. And in another second, she runs back in the direction of camp, crunching dirt and dead leaves under her boots. Bellamy watches her, curses and cups the back of his own neck.  


A single angry tear rolls down his face before he can stop it, like in some other lifetime, she’s already left him, just like this.

-

He follows her scattered footsteps back up to camp.

(Sisyphus reborn, he picks up his boulder.)

-

The next night, Bellamy’s got dirt on his face and sweat on his back, breathing deeply as he stares at the ceiling of his tent. 

No shackles this time because he’s vowed not to sleep.

A gentle knock sounds against the fabric outside of his tent. He sits up on his cot, gaze tracing over Clarke’s silhouette, stomach flipping over, before murmuring for her to come in. 

She stands there in her thin tank top for a moment, feet bare, shorts high on her thighs, blond hair falling from its ponytail and tumbling down against her sunburnt shoulders.

Bellamy glances away, wonders what he’s done to deserve such cruelty in his life.

Clarke hesitates before coming to sit at the edge of his cot.

“About yesterday,” she begins, holding in a breath.  


Bellamy raises a brow. “Don’t worry about it.” His smile is weak. “I get it, Clarke. A lot of girls can’t resist me.”

At this, she lets out a surprised little laugh, hangs her head. “No, I...I don’t know how to fix it.” Clarke’s brow is furrowed now as she casts a hard stare at the floor. “I try really hard to fix things, and they never - it’s never right.”

“Clarke - “  


She shakes her head to stop him, proffers something from the waistband of her shorts. The stack of collated papers lands hard between them, and they both stare down at the makeshift booklet for a moment, until Bellamy looks up quizzically, trying to read the expression on her face.

“There aren’t any books here,” Clarke whispers. In the dark, he can barely see her, but he knows that those blue eyes are set right on him. “Now you have the first one.”  


A wave of emotion hits Bellamy as soon as he picks the book up, a foreign feeling spreading quickly into his bones. 

He’s on the cover of it, a dark portrait of his sharp features, an expression on his face that he doesn’t recognize, regal and wild, shouting out to a crowd among the trees, and on his head she’s drawn a crown made of metal twisted into leaves. It isn’t a mirror image because this isn’t what he sees when he looks at himself.

It’s like Clarke has drawn a king where a delinquent should be.

Inside is an anthology of old stories interwoven with the new. The tragedies of Homer and Euripides spill into their own, victories and losses one in the same. The creatures of the Bacchae swim in lust as the one hundred dance and kiss among the trees. Achilles draws in his last breath just as Finn does. Raven sprouts wings like Nike, and Octavia shoots Artemis’s bow.

Bellamy finds it harder to breathe.

“It was all the paper I had. There are two histories in there,” Clarke says weakly. “Both yours.”  


Bellamy nods, tries to commit the pages to memory. _The stories that made him and the stories he made_.

“Clarke,” he says under a ragged breath, holding the pages against his chest. “Don’t give this to me because you feel like you owe me something.”  


Clarke tilts her head, frowns. “I started that on Unity Day, Bellamy.”

_Jesus Christ_. The wind is knocked from his chest.

“Please tell me,” she continues, kneeling closer to him on the cot. She nods at his neck, at the fading lashes on his back and chest. “You don’t have to carry those memories on your own. The burden, I can take some of it.”  


“Clarke - “  


She reaches out a hand to touch the bruise beneath his ear.

He jumps like her touch has scalded him, lets out a pained breath as she ghosts her skin against his. Bellamy grabs hold of her wrist but doesn’t stop her, just closes his eyes as she traces over it and waits.

A pause.

“They put something around my neck,” Bellamy finally murmurs. And every word pulls an invisible brick from the weight atop his chest. “Like a collar. Made us kneel like dogs and chained us up.”  


Clarke holds in a breath, tries not to cry. Her hand drops to the puncture wound by his collar.

“I don’t know what they put in us,” Bellamy says. “They wanted to sedate us, but the serum turned us into zombies, stung in my veins, and I can still feel the injections, like - “ Bellamy curses under his breath, grabs her wrist tighter. “Like pins and needles, but everyday, every second. Even now.”  


Clarke bites her lip, splays her fingers out across his stomach and sides, and he groans.

“When they whipped me, when they hung me by my feet,” Bellamy rasps. “Fuck, I know that we’ve thought we were going to die more than once on the ground, but this was different.” Bellamy draws in a sharp breath. “I felt my bones breaking, I felt things shattering under my skin. I was ready. I said goodbye to Octavia.”  


Clarke halts her touch.

Bellamy opens his eyes. “I said goodbye to you.”

Quiet.

Finally, Bellamy casts her hand aside, tells her, “Enough. If you’re looking for forgiveness, I can’t give that to you, Clarke. I’m sorry.”

Clarke nods at the ground, a hiccup in her chest.

He cups her chin, forces her to look at him. “Because there’s nothing to forgive. You did what you had to do. Just like I did. Just like you and I have both done from the very beginning. And if you sat there right now and asked me to do it again, Clarke, I would.” His thumb is calloused, it kisses her cheek. “I knew exactly what I was getting into, and I still did. For you, I still would.”

“I don’t deserve that,” Clarke whispers against his hand.  


“A lot of us,” Bellamy says, glancing down at his new book, “don’t deserve a lot of the things we take.”  


Clarke lets out an incredulous breath, shakes her head. “When did you become the rational one?”

Bellamy smirks. “Have you met yourself, Clarke? I’ve always been the rational one.”

Quietly, Clarke touches him again, says in slight wonderment, “I might be going crazy. I don’t think I’m okay.” She draws the lines of an imagined heart over his chest. “But every time I touch you, the screaming stops.”

Bellamy nods, winces. To make light of it, he tries, “That’s the most twisted pickup line I’ve ever heard, princess.”

Maybe it’s just so that he finally shuts up, but she’s the one who kisses him then, not ugly this time, but gentle in her inexperience. As he parts her lips with his, he reaches one hand to cast his book aside, careful with it, and touches her back, attempts to turn her over.

Clarke stops him with a hand on his chest and a firm, “No, Bellamy.”

She pulls the tank top over her head, and Bellamy coughs as he takes in the sight of her breasts, flushed in the heat of the tent. He lays back, hands splayed over her ribcage.

“Jesus, Clarke. I - ”  


Clarke shoves his shirt up his stomach like it’s hard work, frowning the whole time, and he can’t help but smile as he takes it off himself.

“Good?”  


Clarke nods, embarrassed. 

She leans down to kiss the bruise on his neck, and he stiffens, goes rigid. She kisses him again, then again, soft and a little sloppy, until he doesn’t feel the iron burn of a tight collar anymore. Bellamy moans when she grinds her hips down against his, clutches her hair as she trails her lips down his shoulder.

_Forgiveness._

Her shorts come off, so do his.

_Forgiveness._

She bites his hipbone, draws a new line above his scar.

_Forgiveness._

“ _Clarke_ ,” his voice is incredibly deep as he lifts her hips up and presses himself against her entrance, skimming his fingers over the head of his cock, knuckles wet as she bites her lip above him.   


He touches her for a moment, circles her clit with two fingers until she bends and moans above him. He beckons her towards him, begins to slide into her heat as she presses her chest flush to his.

Bellamy closes his eyes and exhales. “You’re so wet, princess.”

Clarke curls into him as she sinks down, and they both let out an aching moan. Soft, heated skin replaces freezing metal as she raises and lowers her hips in a steady rhythm, holding him down with her small body as she makes love to him, her breath hot in his ear. 

When she spreads her legs wider, he curls his fingers into her ass, leaving white moon prints, and goes delirious.

“What do you need, Bellamy?” she whispers, so close to his ear that it’s suddenly the only sound in the world.  


“Faster,” Bellamy groans, his voice strained. “More.”  


Clarke picks up her pace, grinding forward with every thrust. She reaches up to twine her fingers with his over his head. He freezes, then relaxes, relinquishing control to the right person, allowing her to hold onto his trust.

Bellamy tilts his head back, veins dancing up to his jaw.

“Fuck,” he whispers to the night. “ _Fuck_ , Clarke.”  


She moans, holds his hands tighter.

He whispers a slew of profanities along with terms of affection, all against her cheek, voice getting rougher, until he breaks from her grasp and reaches down to still her hips, coming with a broken moan, thumb finding her clit to get her there, too.

The way she says his name when she comes is enough to replace the perpetual ringing in his ears.

-

After, she paints a mural on his back with the tip of her finger.

(Sisyphus smiles. For once, the boulder does not roll back.)


End file.
